


and beauty came like the setting sun

by KannaOphelia



Category: David Blaize - E. F. Benson
Genre: #GiveFrankANiceBoyfriend1920, 1920s, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-typical and period-typical self-directed homophobia, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mentions of Violence, Tearful guilty sex in the trenches, but he gets over it, great war au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:34:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28119279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KannaOphelia/pseuds/KannaOphelia
Summary: Frank meets his former fag again, in the trenches in 1915, and at a tennis party in 1920.
Relationships: Hughes/Frank Maddox, Mentions of Frank Maddox/Original Male Character
Comments: 12
Kudos: 11
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	and beauty came like the setting sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aurilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/gifts).



> "Uniformed servant" was the usual term for batmen at that point of the war.
> 
> In 1920, Frank quotes from an Armistice poem, _Everyone Sang_ by the usually heart-breaking gay Great War poet Siegfried Sassoon. The title comes from the same poem. While most of Sassoon's war poems were about despair and anger, _Everyone Sang_ is about hope and joy.

**DECEMBER 1915**

"Dear Emma,

I know you have received the sad news by now, but I just want to write a line and say how awfully sorry I am for you all. In losing Oscar I lost one of my best friends, and can, perhaps, realise just a little what you and his family are suffering. Oscar died like a hero fighting to protect what he loved best, and he never will be forgotten. If there's anything my own people can do for you, please don't hesitate--"

Frank stared at the letter. Rubbish, it was all rubbish. Stiff and false. He had always prided himself on his writing, on his eloquence, but it failed him now. Private Oscar Wrights, with his thin face and blue eyes and talk of his pretty sweetheart back home, was burning in hell. He had talked of his Emma, yes, kept her cheap daguerreotype in his pocket, until it was crumpled with looking at it. But he had bled to death with his arm blown off, screaming wide-eyed with terror, and died in sin, burning in hell. Sin that Frank had put on him.

He tried to remember Oscar Wrights when he had first been assigned as Frank's uniformed servant. Oscar behind the lines, doing Frank's laundry, talking of his sweetheart. But all Frank could remember was the screaming, and the blood, and torn flesh, and the night before, Oscar leaning eagerly into his fist, muttering words Frank couldn't make sense of into his ear. He had been hot and hard and messy, dripping before Frank had even fumbled into his trousers, spilling messily into into his fist as he sobbed.

"Thank you," he had said, "thank you, sir," and "I know we're moving out soon. Thank you for your kindness."

Thank you. And then he'd tripped over an unexploded grenade and screamed his way into Hell, punished for Frank's sins. They were both due to rotate back behind the front line in only a couple of days. And Frank had smeared the letter now, with the sweat on his hands and his stupid unmanly tears dripping on the page. Just like he had smeared Oscar's purity. He hadn't known where to wipe his hand, and in the end he had licked his own hand clean, hating himself for liking it.

Everything was filth. If he had loved Oscar Wrights in a pure and manly way, if he hadn't given into this _thing_ again, he might have saved him, body and soul. Frank knew he had the capacity to love purely. Hadn't he proved it? He had let David move past hero worship, let him move past any thought of anything more, and still loved him as his best and sweetest friend. But in this place, where everything seemed too sharp and too vivid...

A shadow fell across his lap, obscured his letter from what little light it was.

"Certain you want to do that, lieutenant? Putting things in words is dangerous. I can tell you that."

Captain Hughes. Why did it have to be Hughes, looking at him with such an unreadable expression under the grime? Red eyes, shadows under them, like they all had. But he was still the ridiculously handsome boy from school. Frank's former fag, shame, Frank's warning of what he might become, and they had ended up in the same damn trench. Frank had thought himself saved, and he hadn't been at all. At school Hughes had been anxious to please, and Frank had been a shining light. In this place, Hughes was the real man, tall and handsome and upright, Frank's superior officer. Adored by his men, not a hint of scandal attached to him, and Frank... What was he?

A man weeping over a letter. A useless officer who sent his men from an earthly hell into an immortal one. Facing one man he had wronged, when the man was just a boy, and mourning the death of another. A man who should have gone home, and married his girl, and been happy.

"Sorry about your friend, Maddox. Beastly shame."

"He wasn't my friend." And it was true, that was the worst of it. He had thought he had cared for Oscar, thought he loved him, but how could that be true friendship? Using his own personal servant for comfort was no different than preying on a fag. Everything he had turned his face against when it seemed easy to repent. With Hughes here, like an accusation.

Hughes crouched beside him, extended a precious offering of tobacco. Frank shoved it away.

"Take it. In this rotten place, you have to take every pleasure you can get."

"I lost my pipe." He preferred cigarettes anyway.

"Take mine and keep it then. I have a spare." Probably a lie, and that made it even harder to refuse. It was a nice pipe, with an amber mouthpiece, expensive and well-used. Frank held it in his hands and turned it over. "Thanks, Topknot." The old name slid out.

They sat side by side, backs against sandbags. Frank let his eyes dry, let the letter dry. Maybe he could finish and send it after all. That poor girl didn't deserve to know anything. She deserved to keep her image of her sweetheart, clean and proud in his uniform, untainted by the reality of war, of blood, of Frank Maddox's guilty hands.

"Wrights was a holy terror when he wasn't trying to impress you," Hughes said eventually. Frank turned his head and was surprised and hurt to see that Hughes was grinning, staring off into something only he could see. "Used to sit on the edge smoking, and only popped back into the trenches when the Jerries warned him you were coming."

"Why would they do that?" Frank blinked.

"Oh, our lot do the same. _Offizier!_ and the Jerries scuttle. The Anzacs are the worst of them for fraternizing. Not the French, though. Can't blame them really, considering some of the things that happened to their homes. But the rest of the men know who their enemy is, and it's not each other. It's us."

Frank shook his head. "No. You're making this up."

"We're the ones to send them out with guns in their hands. The lads don't really have anything against each other--well, the French do, poor things. The rest are holding on and hoping they survive until it's all over. I know you're a stickler for rules, but for now, you can't blame the rank and file for taking what comfort and pleasure they can get out of this mess. You, either. Some tobacco and a game of cards isn't going to kill you, but the boredom might."

Frank shook his head mutely. He was wearily grateful that, if Hughes knew anything about what he and Oscar had done, he didn't speak of it. Fellow sinners. He leaned back, stared at the clouds above them. Tomorrow they would sleep in proper beds, be able to bath, wear steamed clothes, while other men were rotated back in. "God won't forgive any of us for this, Topknot. There's no hope for any of us."

"There's plenty of hope. The Jerries are on their last legs. Hold out a bit, and we can all go home. It's too late for poor old Wrights, but most of our men will be all right. Listen." They crouched side by side in the mud, and eventually Frank made it out, at the edge of his hearing. A cry of " _Offizier!_ " and laughter.

Hughes laughed as well, a gentle sound, deep in his throat. Even here, he was so very beautiful. To Frank's exhausted and grief-addled mind, he was like a fallen angel, whispering sin, and looking like salvation.

"See, Maddox? People. We die every day, we kill each other, but we still look out for each other. One day all of this will be over, and we'll pick ourselves back up and be pals with our enemies. No sense being sore over old grudges." He chuckled again, the sound deep and throaty and incongruously sweet in the still night.

Frank turned his head, to find out what kind of person could still laugh in this hell-scape, and was met by parched lips, a strong hand in his hair, a muscular body pressed close. There was such fierce tenderness in the kiss, and something in his soul flamed to it, cleaved desperately. Topknot had been such a _nice_ kid, so eager to please. Like Oscar. Maddox had cherished them, had thought he wouldn't harm them for anything, but he had ruined them both.

He still tried to protest when their mouths passed, even though his hands were clawing against Hughes's shoulder, desperately chasing comfort.

"It's all right," Hughes said indistinctly. "Take comfort where you can." He pressed kisses against Frank's jaw. "God. I wanted to hate you, I was so jealous of Blazes that I wanted to steal him from you, but what I wouldn't have done to have you flick my nose one more time. Had you on a pedestal a mile high. You and your bloody French novels and Greek histories."

"Topknot..."

"I forgive you. It's all right." His hands fumbled at Frank's trousers, pulling the already hard tip of his cock up over his waistband, only the bare head revealed. "You're a good man, Frank. I forgive you."

Frank wasn't even sure what he was being forgiven for. For what he had done to Hughes at school. For abandoning him. For thinking corrupt thoughts of David, for Wrights. For every man he had failed to save, every unknown stranger who had died by his hand. But as Hughes's mouth closed over his cock, hot and wet and clumsy, he leaned his head back and let the tears fall freely, and it felt like forgiveness.

**MAY 1920**

"Well, hullo. Here for the tennis party? Beastly early in the year for it, but at least the weather's fine."

"Topknot!"

Hughes grinned at him. "Well, that's rather a relief. I half thought you would greet me coldly and turn away from your boyhood pal and brother-in-arms."

"Don't be such an unmitigated ass," Frank said, the more roughly because he knew he could be blank and cool and harsh, and because there were too many things that couldn't be said. Instead he returned his contemplation to the ivy over the wall and said, "It's a great thing to see you, Captain." Hughes's left arm was shoved into his pocket, and the outline suggested it was too short, but there was no need to look at it or remark on it. They all had their scars.

"A reunion of sorts." Hughes leaned against the wall next to him. They could hear the laughter floating from near the lawn courts, but Frank had no desire to move. Hughes was so impossibly tall, he thought oddly, or perhaps Frank was short, but it was the same impression from the trenches. That Hughes had grown, and left him behind. "I should have known you'd be brooding like Byron. Thank God," Hughes added, in lower tones. "I heard you came through, but it's not the same as seeing it in the flesh. You've been well?"

"Well enough." There was an ant crawling on the leaf of ivy near him, carrying a heavy burden of something or other, many times bigger than itself. Frank couldn't work out what it was, no matter how carefully he scrutinised it.

"You look well." There were things under Hughes's words Frank could make sense of, if he tried. He had always been good at translation, and bad at not looking straight-on at things. Hughes's right hand was dangling next to his own left, not touching, but if Frank moved his even slightly to the left, the backs of them would brush together. Easy enough then to turn his hand and link fingers.

Someone might see. Did he even care?

"I don't fancy watching tennis after all, do you?" Hughes asked. "It's rather a bore. Are you staying here?"

And it would be easy, to say no. To say he was in whites, obviously he was going to play. To pretend the War and everything concerned with it had never happened, forget it as fast as anyone else tried to do. But Hughes was watching him with a level grey gaze. And beyond the wall was a bed of purple hyacinths, bravely soldiering on despite the lateness of the Spring. Their scent was green and sweet and perfumed, but he could pick up the faint perplexing indolic qualities in the fragrance too, the smell of bodies and musk and sex. Purple hyacinths for forgiveness.

"I feel rather a rotten headache coming on. If I malinger, will you come back to my room for a tipple?"

"I thought you were too straight-laced for the demon drink."

He took a deep breath. "I am."

Hughes flung back his head and laughed, leaning against the wall. He was graceful, predatory as a tom-cat, but those eyes were clear and bright, and there was surely a nervous tremble in his lower lip. And there had been that _Thank God_ , with real emotion behind it. "I'm more hungry than anything. What was it Diogenes said again about love and hunger? You always were topping at Latin."

Another deep breath. The spring-scented air was clean and sharp and painful in his lungs, but also sensual. And he rather thought he'd like Hughes to see his room. Hughes might understand. "You can remind me, if you like."

He leaned over and, very deliberately, flicked Hughes on the nose. Hughes grinned at him in startled delight, and Frank headed off, pausing on the way to pluck a hyacinth and tuck it in his button-hole. He could hear Hughes, now the one off-balance, scuttling after him.

Frank was staying in the Blue Room, specially favoured as he was. Bags and Mrs Bags, as the Hon. George Crabtree and his lady Ida were known, were kind to him, even if David, much-decorated and golden-haired, was the guest of honour. Frank had filled it with books, but one shelf was bare except two photos. Oscar Wrights in happier days, hand-in-hand with Emma, who had married an American soldier and had a kid. Frank had sent one hell of a christening gift. David, bright-eyed and handsome and somehow unchanged from the war.

In front of the photos lay a pipe with an amber mouthpiece.

Hughes walked over to it, picked it up and turned it in his good hand. "Knew I forgot to get this back from you, you awful scrounger." His voice was slightly unsteady.

"It's mine now. If you want to see it often, you'll just have to spend time in my rooms often." Frank pulled the hyacinth from his buttonhole and laid it in the same shrine. "Worried myself sick when you were invalided out and never wrote."

"Didn't think it would be welcome. Wasn't expecting such a warm welcome at all." Hughes's voice was harsh. "You never wrote to me when I left Adams's. And things that happen in the trenches stay there. Besides, look at me." He pulled his left arm from its shielding pocket, the bottom of the sleeve draping loose.

Frank touched the flower's delicate petals, breathed in the smell. Hughes was still holding the pipe. He was still there. And Frank, having no words, found someone else's words to use.

" _Everyone suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight, as prisoned birds must find in freedom, Winging wildly across the white orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight._ You told me there was hope."

"I had the timing wrong."

"I'm tired of prison. I want to fly. And you are my hope. Hughes-- _Topknot_ \--"

"Edwin." God help Frank, there was a grin. He wanted to flick his nose again. He wanted to kiss him. He wanted to shove him down on the bed and do to him what he had done for Frank. "Edwin who has been in love with you since he was fourteen, poor bastard."

"Edwin. My love, if he'll have me."

"Oh, I'll have you. Any way you want. Six ways to Sunday and inside out."

He stepped forward, and as his lover's mouth crashed down on his and the pipe fell unregarded to the floor, he thought, yes, this is it. This is simple human pleasure, and it is not filth, it is _hope._

It's love.


End file.
